


Conduit

by Sheryl_Holmes



Category: Captain America (Movies), Iron Man (Movies), Marvel Cinematic Universe, Thor (Movies)
Genre: And it's awful, BAMF Darcy Lewis, Bruce "Don't Touch Me" Banner, Bruce Banner & Tony Stark Friendship, Bruce Banner Angst, Bruce Banner Feels, Bruce Banner Has Issues, Bruce Banner Needs a Hug, Bruce is an asshole, Clint Barton & Natasha Romanov Friendship, Clint Barton is sometimes a jerk, Darcy "Stop Being a Baby" Lewis, Darcy Lewis & Loki Friendship, Darcy Lewis & Tony Stark Friendship, Darcy Lewis - Freeform, Darcy Lewis Gets Superpowers, Darcy Lewis is NOT the Avengers's mama bear, Darcy Lewis kicks ass, Darcy likes him anyway, Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde, F/M, Fatherly Nick Fury, Good Loki (Marvel), Hulk Needs a Hug, Jane "What the Fuck Is Going on" Foster, Jane Foster & Darcy Lewis Friendship, Jane Foster Loves Science, Nick "Everyone Shut Up" Fury, Phil "encourging uncle" Coulson, Pining Loki, Powers!Darcy Lewis, Protective Hulk (Marvel), Slow Burn, Stop giving Darcy a hard time, TaserSmash, Tony "Don't Touch My Friend" Stark, gamma rays, slowburn, the slowest of burns, why are all my stories slowburns?
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-07-22
Updated: 2018-07-22
Packaged: 2019-06-14 10:43:25
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 12,515
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15387042
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Sheryl_Holmes/pseuds/Sheryl_Holmes
Summary: Darcy Lewis, intern extraordinaire, gets juiced up by a lab accident. Now Fury wants her on the team, but Darcy isn't sold."Interns are supposed to get the coffee, not de-Hyde Dr. Jekyll!""I wasn't offering, Lewis; that was an order."





	1. Curriculum Vitae

**Author's Note:**

> This story is written in the 3rd person. I only wrote the Intro in 2nd/1st person because it seemed to fit. I wanted this moment to be from Darcy's direct perspective, but from Chapter II onward, it's all 3rd person, baby.  
> Also: I appreciate reviews! Talk to me, my dudes.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> And so it begins...

Imagine being the most brilliant person in all of your classes. Seriously. You're so freaking smart that you graduate high school early, then get your AA early despite having triple majored because everything and its brother interests you. Imagine that people always underestimated you because you're perky and snarky and sort of look maybe a little like a slacker because you like to wear knit things and you cuss more often than actually putting your extensive used-to-read-the-dictionary-for-fun-when-I-was-bored-as-a-kid vocabulary to use.

Imagine for a moment that you have a mind that can get so damn bored so damn easy that you once learned to play the piano one week, dropped it, picked up the cello, dropped it, picked up the oboe, dropped it, and could still play all three well enough to half-ass your way into a music scholarship. Imagine that you're so desperate for mental stimulation that you invented a drinking game called strip-Sudoku and wrote a rulebook for it so you could teach it to the stoner friends who copied your grades. Imagine that this same antsy cerebral impulsiveness led you to decide, on an absolute whim with no forethought whatsoever, to sign up for a fucking astrophysics internship.

Because, here's the deal: That girl? Yeah, that's me. And when I signed up to be Jane Foster's assistant/intern/whatever—after passing a flyer in my university hallway and thinking "astrophysics sounds fun"—I most certainly was not signing up to be involved in an interplanetary government conspiracy that included alien robots, Norse gods, and the ubiquitous men in black.

I was signing up to learn how to use fancy telescopes and talk jargon and…okay, maybe I had no idea what astrophysics actually involved, but I was doing a damn good job as an intern up until the freaking GOD OF THUNDER fell from the sky.

Then my life turned into this. Sitting in a small white room with Jane digging a trench into the floor with her pacing while I tried to remember the finger patterns to Bach's Concerto for Violin and Oboe in C minor. The dull echo of a sterile government "debriefing" (interrogation) room. The tiny camera up in the top right corner of the box we occupied, blinking as it zooms in on my face.

This. This is my fucking life.

I sighed. Jane was worrying her lip with her teeth as she glanced at me, but I flashed her a Darcy-smile. The kind with teeth and dimples that said "Buck up, pal! This is a walk in the park! Nobody is going to get their brains washed today!" Jane visibly relaxed and continued her incessant pacing. And I went back to playing the oboe in my head and twitching my fingers to keep from imagining what they might accomplish by murdering us, memory wiping us, or employing an experimental form of vivisection. Jane made another round and I grinned again, this time offering a double thumbs-up.

The door slammed open. We both jumped and I nearly fell off the uncomfortable white chair my derriere was occupying. Two suits walked in, followed quickly by a man who honest-to-Norse-gods was wearing a leather duster, a turtleneck, and an eyepatch.

"Where's the fluffy white cat? You can't reveal your evil plan without him." Damn word vomit.

He was nonplussed. In fact, hitting the same button I'd become sensitive to through the years, he just straight up ignored my presence. His eyes—eye, sorry—didn't waver from Jane as he asked, voice hard and condescending as if those were permanent characteristics of his personality:

"I take it you want to know if Thor is alive?"

Jane nodded vehemently.

"He's fine."

Jane's shoulders fell, her body going lax after so many hours of worrying for his life. She'd seen his very public display of heroism smeared across every news channel for all of one minute before she'd lost her cool and called the number Agent Coulson had provided her. They'd picked us up, shipped us to a "secure location" and firmly told us to wait. Wait, they told us, as New York City was crumbling.

And apparently what we'd waited for was all of thirteen words from a Bond villain. He turned on his heel and was walking out.

This was so not going to fly.

"Um, excuse me, but what happens now?"

Finally, he deigned to glance over his leather-clad shoulder. He raised an eyebrow over his unseeing eye.

"Who the hell are you?"

I laughed lightly, but it sounded confrontational in a sarcastic sort of way. "I'm the intern."

"Dr. Foster, do you need an intern?"

The fuck did that mean?!

Jane looked startled and rushed to insist, that yes, she definitely needed her intern.

Dr. No seemed to chew on that a moment, then he replied, "Too bad," and stalked out the door.

As the door shut behind the suits, I asked aloud to no one, "Too bad as in 'too bad, so sad, we're gonna' kill her anyway'? Or too bad as in 'too bad you'll have to work with her, that one annoys me'?" I couldn't help that my voice sounded disinterested. I drawled the words but my eyes were wide and I was legit concerned. Thankfully, it seemed Jane recognized I was actually fearing for my life. She opened her mouth, it seemed, to comfort me, but nothing came out. Jane shook her head dumbly, still staring at the closed door. She tried again:

"I…don't know."

Then the door opened again and we repeated the startled act. This time, Agent Coulson strolled in, looking amiable and smug as ever.

"Dr. Foster, Ms. Lewis!" he offered jovially, as if we hadn't just been trapped in a box for ten hours with supervised pee breaks then scared shitless by a taciturn PETA target. He took off his sunglasses with one hand and pocketed them smoothly. "Congratulations!" Jane and I shared a look—hers perplexed and mine full of dread. Coulson grinned at us, spreading his hands out in a gesture of warm welcome. "You're hired!"


	2. The Chamber

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Stark Tower turns out to be slightly less perfect than Darcy anticipated it would be.

**Day 1:**

She couldn't help it. The place was gorgeous.

Imagine the most beautiful house you've ever entered—vaulted ceiling, professionally-picked modern décor, glass walls and a view to boot…the whole nine yards.

Yeah. This was better.

Darcy turned in circles over and over again as she took in the lobby of the Stark Tower. It wasn't that it was warm and welcoming. On the contrary, it was sterile. The place was all hard surfaces and bland colors and had all the charm of a hospital room. But it still felt… _homey_ somehow. Like the way Jane's brain felt homey to Darcy: it was calculating, but still emotional at its core. This place had heart in it, somewhere. And, much like Jane's brain, it was also _huge_.

She nearly tripped over her feet taking it all in. She couldn't believe she got to room with Jane in this legendary building. A double-apartment. Jane had insisted on Darcy living nearby and that was the best she could argue for in her favor—though, really, it was because Darcy was the thread to sanity that Jane recognized she desperately needed. But it was appreciated all the same.

As Darcy made herself dizzy with distracted pirouettes, she heard Jane arguing with a second voice over how she'd like her equipment transferred. She was also asking when she could see Thor. Darcy glanced back to see who was lazily responding to her with a degree of condescension she'd learned to attribute to privileged males. She nearly fell backwards onto her ass.

Tony Stark. Jane, her boss/best friend, was arguing over her handmade equipment with _Tony_ Friggin' _Stark_. She figured she'd run into the guy eventually (after all, it was _his_ Tower, even if S.H.I.E.L.D. was the one paying the rent.) But she didn't think it'd be so soon.

Darcy turned back to glance at the forty-foot-high ceiling.

 _I guess this is my life now,_ she shrugged, grinning. _Better than the New Mexican desert, definitely._

**Day 2:**

**Notes from Darcy Lewis's personal journal, page 481:**

Okay, so this place has a virtual butler named Jarvis. Not sure if that's creepy or cool. I feel like I'm being watched when I take a shower and I guess I am…? I mean, he's not WATCHING ME so much as he's watching EVERYONE, but that's not exactly comforting, you know what I mean? I feel like shit could get _2000: A Space Odyssey_ real fucking quick around here. But the guy actually seems pretty cool. Like, I'd legit get a beer with him.

That is, if he had a corporeal form. Which he doesn't. Anyway, I told him I'd like to chill with him sometime and he sounded amused.

Dude, can A.I.s BE amused?

Holy shit, what if we gave a machine sentience and instead of taking over the world it just decided to go into stand up comedy?

That seems way more likely. Let's be real. Having free will is already a joke. I mean, look where it got me. I have made literally zero impactful decisions about my life since I had that one bright idea in the hall of my university two years ago. Now I live where Jane wants me to live, work where the government wants me to work, and I can't even buy my own shampoo anymore because this place is stocked according to Pepper Potts's specifications.

Free will my ass.

**Day 8:**

"What can I say? The guy's a gambler."

Stark and an appalled lab tech had been arguing over the Mega-Mysterious Magic Machine Chamber (or M-squared-C, as Darcy was calling it in her head) for nigh on forty minutes now. The ten-foot-tall metal chamber (she wasn't sure what its official title was) stood against the back wall of the massive laboratory Jane was set to share with Stark and a few others. Stark kept saying everything would be fine and the lab tech kept saying something about instability and collateral damage.

Now that Jane had reunited with her guy (an event which began with her quietly questioning Thor for not coming to see her sooner while she was slaving away to build a bridge to get to him and ended in a long hug that felt awkward to the bystanders Stark and Darcy) she'd re-entered her work in earnest. And Darcy was being her extra pair of hands—though, more than anything, she was just taking in all the gadgets and gizmos. And of all the sciencey stuff in the entire building, it was the mystery box that intrigued her the most. It called to her, in all its secretive glory—a metal vault that scared off lab techs, with the tiny (probably reinforced) glass window on its door she'd yet been allowed to peer into. She'd been lusting after the vault for six days now, ever since she'd first stepped foot into the lab. And this was the first time she'd heard anyone actually talk about it.

Stark was apparently overseeing changes to the application of some other doc's designs for the thing and something in the special physics language that Darcy didn't speak was making the poor lab tech lose his nuts and bolts.

Darcy only caught bits and pieces as she was heading in and out of the lab with the tools and equipment Jane requested (it'd all been packed in the expectedly absurd Dr. Foster technique—i.e. the "What Method?" method.) But she slowed her footsteps every time she came and left the room as Jane absentmindedly asked what was taking so long. Darcy nearly growled, not wanting to draw attention to the fact that Stark had an attentive audience. Thankfully, the argument continued blissfully unaware of Darcy's gaze as she gave the bickering pair sideways glances, handing off different tools to an oil-smudged and sweaty Jane on the floor. The conversation seemed to get more and more ridiculous with the animated faces the twenty-something tech was making.

"B-but sir, if what these directions are indicating mean what I think they mean—" Darcy started to call him Shaggy in her head. He had an ill-advised goatee, accented by a wrinkled dress shirt and too-long limbs.

"That's usually what the word 'indicating' indicates, kid," Stark drawled, clearly relishing the guy's panic.

Stark stood atop the raised half of the lab, up a few stairs, wearing a three-piece suit. The transparent glass and white-walled design of the facility made him look like a sort of mythical leader in a pale and ghostly dimension. Just below him, yards away, Jane lay in a mess of jury-rigged machinery—wrenches, tape, various cords running every which-way, and a bottle leaking some kind of apoxy strewn around her body as she attempted to rewire one of her thingamajigs ("Particle redistributor," Jane corrected, exasperated.) It was the difference between science Heaven and science Hell. And Darcy was down in the realm of oil, tin, and muck.

"Darcy, the—the circular one. With the hook," came Jane's voice, muffled as it echoed out of the belly of one of her metal-and-wire children. Her hand pantomimed vaguely, grease-smeared fingers snapping as if the action contributed to her description of the needed tool.

From this angle, Jane looked like a lowly mechanic in a pristine surgical room. The dichotomy was as amusing as it was endearing. Usually, Darcy could appreciate the elbows-deep feel of Jane's brand of science, but not while she was eavesdropping. Grumbling, Darcy let her blue eyes scan the various items on the floor before her; none of them seemed to match that description. Finally, she picked up something resembling a sodergun with a curved nose, still watching the discussion taking place On High. She cursed as she stubbed her toe on an iron something-or-another, not watching where she was walking as she not-so-surreptitiously took stock of the interaction.

"He knows what's he's doing."

"Sir, with all due respect, I don't feel comfortable working on something with such dangerous implications—"

"You're the menial labor. You follow the instructions and I'll do the hard stuff. No danger for you."

"That's—that's not my point."

"Uh-huh, and do I care what your point is?" By now, Stark was perusing his smart phone, his tone firmly disinterested. His stocky build went well with the lackadaisical attitude, _contraposto_ stance, and frustratingly dismissive tilt of the head. But Darcy could tell by the tightness in his shoulders that having his authority questioned was getting under his skin in a very real way.

The tech took a deep breath, carefully scratching his goatee. "It's not just dangerous to work on, Mr. Stark, it's dangerous to _use_."

"Which is why," Stark raised his eyes from his phone, voice finally rising, "we're making the damn chamber. If you think you're smarter than either myself or my colleague, kid, you've got a bigger ego than I do—" He paused, pretending to think, then rectified his statement. "I take that back. No one is as egotistical as I am, but you're giving me a run for my money. I'll make it easy for you. Work on the project or get the fuck out."

The tech stood there, shocked. Then, abruptly, he turned and walked down the stairs. Tony Stark stared as the glass door swung shut passively behind him.

"Well…that wasn't the reaction I was expecting." He continued to stand still a moment. Then, recovering quickly, he turned directly to Darcy.

"You're Foster's tech?"

Darcy's brain glitched as she realized she was no longer an unseen observer in this situation. _Well, damn. I guess I'm not as invisible as I thought._

"Uhhh…"

Stark didn't wait for her to find her tongue. "Dr. Foster, we have a friendly work environment." His voice was deceptively saccharine. "Do you believe in sharing?"

Jane was in science la-la land as she responded with a _very_ aware and comprehending (sarcasm strongly implied): "Uh-huh." A tool clattered as it fell to the floor in front of her feet, punctuating her response.

"Great!" He slapped his hands together and rubbed them with vigor. "You're," he directed this comment to Darcy, "due back here tomorrow at 6 to go over these blueprints with me." He began his descent from the higher ground.

Darcy imagined reaching into her brain to reattach her vocal chords accordingly. "Wha—no, hold up. I'm her assistant, yeah, but, hey man, I've never even taken a calculus class."

Stark paused on the steps. Then, to her surprise, a grin spread across his face. "All the better." As he swaggered out the door, she overheard him mutter, "…none of that 'I know better than the geniuses' bullshit."

She knew she was in trouble but she couldn't even find it in her to be angry at Jane.

_Holy shit, I get to work on the **chamber!**_

Jane was too distracted to see Darcy doing her happy dance over the sea of cords.

**Sometime Between Days 8 and 9:**

A thud jolted Darcy from sleep. She stared up at her ceiling. Somewhere up there, in the floors above her bedroom, something was happening. She blearily squinted at the red digits on her alarm clock. **03:31** blinked back at her. She yawned and sat up on her elbows. Another dull thud came. It sounded both loud and quiet—like something large was being contained. _Maybe Stark is working on his suit_ , she yawned again, staring up at her ceiling in the dark. Blue moonlight from her window, high on the sixty-seventh floor, outlined the high points of the bedroom furniture. But for the most part, she was in a blinding darkness. Suddenly, chills went up her arms. Something was _wrong_ , she could feel it, and the thought made her feel like a sitting duck.

A third, then fourth thud sounded, louder this time. Closer.

Darcy considered crawling out of bed. Maybe it'd woken Jane, too. Thor had already headed back to Asgard temporarily to deal with his brother, so it wouldn't be as if she were interrupting anything. Darcy stared down her glasses on the nightstand as she chewed on the inside of her cheek. She felt like a five-year-old again, afraid to leave the sanctuary of her bed.

"Miss Lewis?" a voice asked in the darkness. Darcy caught a scream as it tried to work its way up her throat. She put her hand to her chest and breathed through the panic, calming her racing heartbeat.

"Jarvis, what the hell, man!"

"I'm sorry to have startled you," he drawled. He didn't sound sorry at all. "Are you well? Your sleeping pattern seems to have been disrupted."

"Yeah, by the crazy noise up top." Jarvis was silent to that and she thought maybe she'd even confused an A.I.

"Yes, it appears some activity is taking place upstairs. It should subside in several minutes, Miss Lewis. Might I be of any more assistance?"

Darcy glared suspiciously at the upper right corner of the room, where she presumed one of the cameras must be hidden. _Did the fucking A.I. just lie to me? "Activity"_ _my ass..._

"No, dude, I think we're all groovy for tonight," she replied with false perk.

Jarvis seemed to hesitate. Then: "Goodnight, Miss Lewis."

Jarvis was right; the sounds _did_ stop. But she didn't have a good night.

Darcy Lewis studied the ceiling until the sun came up.


	3. The Gambler

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> A secret government project, unexplained sounds in the night, and an annoying genius boss. This is the life of Darcy Lewis.

**Day 9**

Well, they were blue.

The blueprints, that is. At least in that way they were normal.

In the way of being actual _prints_ they were not like other blueprints; they were holographic. Other ways in which they were entirely unlike normal blueprints included the fact that they were not even slightly helpful or germane to process of building the thing they supposedly were blueprints _to._

Or, at least Darcy _thought_ normal blueprints were helpful. It wasn't as if she'd ever seen blueprints before in her life, let alone holographic ones that went to a giant Tin Box of Mystery.

Darcy swallowed. The resulting noise sounded like it came straight out of a cartoon. _Gulp._

6 in the morning and she hadn't had a wink of sleep since the weird shit upstairs woke her up. And now she had been given proxy directions by Jarvis (presumably because Stark was still sleeping at this ungodly hour) to "go over" and "become familiar with" the chamber's designs.

When Jarvis pulled them up in the center of the upper level of the lab, Darcy had been ecstatic; she got to be where Stark worked and, given the state of Jane's part of the lab, it felt like a step up in the world (no pun intended.) When she got a closer look at the designs, however, she found herself face-to-face with equations and schematics and some scrawled-then-scanned-into-the-hologram sketches that she couldn't decipher even if she _could_ read this mad scientist's muddled handwriting. Fuck. Was this _Stark's_ penmanship? How the hell did he get anything accomplished?

"Okay, dude. C'mon. This is friggin' chicken scratch. How the hell am I supposed to read this?"

"I don't believe that was the point, Miss Lewis," Jarvis's voice responded hesitantly. Darcy snorted.

"I get that Stark doesn't want anyone questioning his authority, but it'd be easier to _follow_ his directions if I knew what they were." Darcy leaned closer to the hologram, her forehead dipping into some floating numbers while her eyes tried to take in the symbols. Was that a 4 or a _g?_ "How did Shaggy even get to the point where he could commit mutiny? I can't read any of this, let alone get spooked by it," she muttered.

"…Shaggy, Miss Lewis?"

"Yeah. The guy that looked like he came out of the Scooby Doo cartoon. Had an unconvincing goatee."

"With all due respect, Miss Lewis, aren't _all_ goatees unconvincing?"

 _I fucking knew he should go into stand up,_ Darcy chuckled to herself. "Jarvis, you can call me Darcy."

"If that is your preference, Darcy." He said it the same way he said "Miss Lewis"—like it was a title, not a name. _Wait—he? It? "It" just feels disrespectful, but does Jarvis identify as male? Whoa. What if Stark gave him a masculine voice but he thinks of himself as female. Shit. That would open up a whole 'nother level of questions about transgender rights._

Darcy snapped herself out of her philosophical reverie. She needed to get this stuff down. It didn't matter that Stark's entire purpose in this was to make her feel helpless enough not to question him; she had no intention of being intimidated out of doing the job right. Through the hologram, she saw a notebook sprawled out on Jane's desk. Grabbing it, she marched back upstairs, gel pen handy and face determined.

Darcy Lewis didn't do helpless.

_Two Hours Later_

Did she have any idea what any of it meant? Fuck no. Could she read it now? Hell yes.

Darcy's aunt was a nurse and out of all the medical advice she had given Darcy, only one thing she said had stuck. She could still hear Aunt Flor's nasally Boston accent: _"If you ever find yourself in the unfortunate position of having to read a doctor's handwriting—and honey, trust me, docs write like two-year-olds—read the script **sideways**!"_

"Works like a charm," Darcy said in a mimicked Bostonian drawl as she finished off her handwritten (and far more legible) copy of the blueprints presented to her by the holograms. She'd nearly gotten a crick in her neck the first half hour from turning her head until Jarvis politely informed her that she could zoom in and out and rotate the pages. Now, she had no neck pain and a notebook full of science. _Internal high five!_ she congratulated herself.

At that moment, the automatic glass door to the lab slid open, revealing a swanky Tony Stark.

He sauntered in, smug as ever in his signature three-piece suit. His tie, unsurprisingly, was Iron Man red. "So. Did you become adequately acquainted with the blueprints?" Darcy decided if she didn't love challenges so much she'd probably want to kill him right now.

"Yeah, I rewrote it all so we could read it."

The shock was plain on his face. "You—you _what?_ " He jogged up the steps and tore the notebook from her hands, despite her protest. Staring at the pages, he flipped through them with violent urgency. After several pages, he stopped abruptly and began blinking. Slowly, he glanced back up at her, eyes narrowing. Something shifted behind his eyes as he took her in. Despite herself, Darcy was pleased. _Respect_. She'd gained some fractional bit of _respect_.

"Alright, fine," he said grudgingly, his tone losing all its smug and sarcastic perkiness. "You win this round." He handed her back the notebook as she gave him her best shit-eating, in-your-face grin. "Now, do you know what any of it means?"

Completely unperturbed, she continued grinning. "Absolutely no idea!"

He snorted. "Great. Well, this," he flipped the pages back to a sketch, "is a side-view of the walls. Or at least it's supposed to be. I guess it's what passes for one of his sketches."

Darcy's eyebrows furrowed. "Wait. These aren't yours?"

Stark looked appalled. "What? Do you think so low of me?" He put his hands against his chest as if mortally wounded. Darcy laughed.

"What are they for, anyway?"

Stark raised his eyebrow and pointed caustically at the giant metal box over his shoulder. She rolled her eyes.

"You know what I'm asking, Mr. Stark."

"Tony," he corrected immediately, "And…the machine is a bit of a gamble. Let's leave it at that."

"So…these are our mysterious ' _gambler's'_ schematics?"

"She's got it, folks!" Stark announced to no one.

Darcy nodded slowly. "So, if _you_ know what these mean and now we have a clean copy…"

"Then we can get to work with far less interruption," he agreed, grinning.

"What interruption?"

"If you hadn't done this, kid, I'd have had to call him every twenty minutes. So, uh," he turned his back to her and began pulling out some vaguely state-of-the-art-looking equipment, "thanks," he finally finished, muttering over his shoulder. Darcy smiled.

**Day 13, 3:04AM**

_Thud._

Darcy's eyes opened expectantly. Third time in the past week. Was this normal? Should she be asking someone about it, or would they only lie as Jarvis had that first time she'd heard it?

Jarvis said nothing tonight. He'd asked if she was all right, sounding genuinely concerned, the second time it had happened. She'd told him she was fine but she hadn't slept that night and she knew the instant she woke up she wouldn't be sleeping tonight, either.

The thuds continued. They frightened her the way a shadow frightens a child. It's worse, somehow, than seeing a monster. For the same reason horror films are always scarier when you can't see the Evil, the thuds were worse for her not knowing what made them. It's the not knowing that makes it scary. Humans are afraid of what they cannot understand and even more afraid of what they can't see, can't perceive, don't know. The human mind can cook up fears far worse than whatever the reality is.

Darcy felt that insidious apprehension crawl inside her skin. As was becoming habit, she studied the steady rhythm of her own breathing and prayed in her mind. The sounds finally stopped an hour later, but somehow the silence was worse.

**Week 5**

Tony was a royal pain in the ass.

In his arms he held two large cylinders of probably hazardous material. The glass showed they held some kind of transparent, yellowish-green viscous fluid. Darcy leveled her gaze with him.

He wore a white shirt with various stains (oil, apoxy, lab experiments) and low-hanging jeans that were desperate for some belt support. His feet were bare. His hair was twisted in a dozen places. How the hell did he convince anyone he was a put-together billionaire? He looked homeless, dammit. But his face was bright and excited, 5-o'clock shadow notwithstanding.

"C'mon, help me out! They've got to be installed!"

"Tell me what's in them, Tony," Darcy growled in response.

"Nope," he popped the p and grinned back, "No ruining the surprise!"

No way was she losing an arm for this job. The last time Tony had tried to get her involved in one of his experiments she'd ended up with a scalded lab coat and the tips of her hair on fire. Now, with her hair tightly held back in a bun at the base of her neck and wearing a purple sweater with no hanging material, she shook her head.

"I have other responsibilities, Tony. Jane needs all my body parts _in tact_ and if you want me to be the flunkie for your special projects, you gotta pay me more."

Tony scoffed. "It's not for a special project, Darce. It's for the chamber. Which falls squarely within your job description!" he raised his eyebrows at her and gestured impatiently with both cylinders, jostling them in his arms.

She groaned. "What? The chamber has volatile material, too? The fuck, man, isn't _anything_ in this place safe?"

"Science isn't fun if it's safe," he quipped matter-of-factly, "Now take this one," he shifted the cylinder into her arms casually, "and follow me."

She wrapped her arms tightly around the metal-and-glass case. "Holy _shit_ , Tony. This thing weighs like thirty pounds!"

"Twenty-eight," he called back as the door to the chamber hissed, "and you made me hold both of them while you complained!"

Darcy was jolted out of her annoyance. The vault's door was _opening_. _Call me Harry Potter, folks, because I am entering the Chamber of Secrets!_ she thought gleefully.

Tony stepped inside, still barefoot. She scooted after him, hauling her load. The door shut automatically behind them with the sound of heavy bolts clunking into place. Darcy's eyes went wide.

"Safety precautions. It won't stay open, so you've got to have the code if you want to get out," he called back to her, his voice multiplying and folding over itself with the reverberation of being in close quarters.

"So when are going to give me the codes?" she called back.

"No way am I trusting you not to come in here without my permission," he coughed out a laugh, "I've got the codes, don't you worry."

She scowled and shifted the cylinder in her arms. Darcy looked around the room for the first time and, to her immediate disappointment, the chamber was empty. It was larger on the inside than she'd expected, though. _Must extend past the wall outside,_ she realized. Her eyes scanned their surroundings as Tony made his way to the back, entering a code into the wall with his free hand. She noticed there was a shiny silver plate in the center that contrasted with the rest of the grating on the floor.

"What's that for?" she asked, her voice echoing around them.

"It's a secret, Harriet the Spy. Quit with the questions and get your ass over here with that thing."

"Asshole," she muttered. The word bounced off the walls and she heard Tony cluck in disapproval as she lugged the cylinder towards him.

"Is that any way to treat your boss?" he asked. _Not my boss_ , she thought, and was about to vocalize the correction when he tacked on: "And be careful. Drop that stuff and we're both toast."

Darcy froze, the load suddenly feeling _much_ heavier.

"…what kind of toast? Like, sourdough or rye? Or, like, _burnt?_ "

Tony raised an eyebrow and she forced herself to gingerly hand over the cylinder. When the container was in his arms, he responded nonchalantly: "Molecularly deconstructed toast."

Ignoring her facial expression of horror, he placed the cylinder of goo into an awaiting slot in the wall and pressed a button next to it. It spun and was hidden seamlessly.

When they stepped out of the chamber, Darcy took a deep breath.

"Going to quit on me?" Tony asked. He sounded flippant and humorous about it, but that was the way he sounded about everything. Darcy knew him better than that by now. He had deep-seated issues with being abandoned and betrayed. And, God only knew why, but she didn't like being added to whatever list he had going in his head of the people who made him feel unworthy of their loyalty or affection. _Ugh. Psychological bullshit. If only I hadn't noticed his stupid insecurities then I wouldn't have to care._

"Ever hand me hazardous material without my express permission again and I'll murder you in your sleep," she replied, instead, and made her way calmly down the steps of the lab.

"Oh, come on!" he shouted after her. "It's yellow-green goop in a metal can! Of course it's hazardous! Do you expect me to spell _everything_ out for you?"

She rolled her eyes at his ribbing and left the lab for the day.

**Week 6**

_Thud. Thud. Thudthudthud._

Darcy flew up from her pillow, heaving for breath. _It was just a nightmare_ , she inhaled deeply. _Just a nightmare... The sounds have never been that loud before, so of course it was a nightmare._ Darcy rubbed her temples.

_THUD._

Darcy's eyes widened and she whipped her head toward the door. _Where the fuck is Jane when you need a friend to hide under the covers with?_ She'd gone on one of her blasted conference trips and Darcy had stayed behind to help Tony with the chamber. The thuds were steadily getting closer. _Should've just told Tony off and gone with her_ , she thought as she frantically tripped out of her bed, groping blindly for the nightstand. Her glasses clattered to the floor in the darkness. The thuds stopped. _Nope._

"Jarvis!" she hissed. She waited. Jarvis didn't respond. _Holy shit, I'm going to die._ Darcy got down on her knees and started to feel for her glasses. _This is not the time to be cosplaying as Velma, Darcy!_ she shouted at herself inwardly. The thuds started up again, faster this time, getting closer. They were on her story of the building. She could hear grunting and labored breathing accompanying the familiar thuds.

She scrambled to her feet. Darcy closed her eyes and took several deep breaths. If there was anything she was not willing to be, it was a sitting duck.

There was only one exit to her apartment.

She took careful, measured steps toward her open bedroom door, slipping out. She cringed as the door squeaked on its hinges, but the thuds didn't seem to be affected this time. She hoped it was a coincidence that the thuds had stopped when her glasses fell. The thuds were still far enough away (she thought) that she still felt she had a chance. But the moment Darcy got out that door, there would be no more tip-toeing; she knew she'd have to book it to the elevator like Speedy Gonzalez on bath salts.

Finally, she found herself standing in front of the door with her hand on the knob. She couldn't recall how she got across the apartment; she was dazed and in the dark and blind without her glasses and it was practically a miracle she hadn't tripped over any of the furniture. But she was here now. Two beats of getting her head in order and she gauged the distance of the thuds. They were about to turn the corner. _Now or never, Lewis_. She nodded her head once with determination, yanked the door open, and shot down the hall in her pajamas and bare feet.

The light of the hallway in that pristine white building was blinding. She nearly ran into a wall. But she kept going because she could hear the thuds coming faster; she wasn't exactly light-footed, after all. She'd been terrible in ballet as a child. But she'd been fantastic at track.

Darcy shot around the corner and could see the elevator at the end of the hall. _I will **not** be a horror movie cliché. I will **not** be a horror movie cliché, _ she repeated to herself like a mantra.

She tried to slow down quickly but still managed to collide with the elevator doors, taking a swift and painful blow to her shoulder. She ignored the pain and pressed the down button. It didn't take. She balked. She tried it again, but the button still didn't light up green. Forcing herself not to press the thing over and over again (the opening scene from _Stranger Things_ played in her head), Darcy spun around, looking anywhere for the entrance to the stairwell. But with startling clarity, it dawned on her…that the stairs were on the other side of the hall.

With horror-filled eyes, she stared at the wall with the blurry image of a man running down stairs to escape a pictographic fire. It was all the way over there…and she was all the way over here.

The thuds were still coming. They'd make it to that wall faster than she would.

"Jarvis," she called. No response.

The thuds were closer.

"Jarvis," she said, anxiety extending his name like a plea.

The grunts were louder.

"JARVIS!" she shouted, looking up and down the hallway. She rushed forward a several yards, trying the few nearby doors, but none of them opened. Usually they opened the moment you took the handles. Nothing was really "locked"; everything was programmed to open according to security clearance and Jarvis held those virtual keys. With growing panic, Darcy realized someone had either disabled Jarvis or disconnected him from the building.

Darcy raised her head to stare down the hall. _Well, only three choices now. Choice numero uno: Panic like a motherfuck. Choice numero dos: Shut down and be overtaken by whatever fate awaits me. Or, choice numero tres…_

"Come and get me, you big fucker! Come on!" she shouted, standing her ground firmly in the center of the hall with her back to the elevator. "You think you can take me, asshole?" The "asshole" wasn't in view yet, but the thuds were slowly approaching now, not as frenzied as before. Even if it had been in view, she probably wouldn't have been able to see it, though. Darcy wondered how intimidating she really seemed at that moment, wearing an oversized Mighty Morphin Power Rangers t-shirt and Slytherin flannel PJ bottoms, her hair in two messy pigtails, squinting hard at whatever she might (but probably wouldn't) see coming.

The plan was bound to fail but if she was going out by the hand of some mystery monster, she was going out her own way. She labeled it Operation Toro in her mind to calm herself. She just had to get the bull to charge and then, hopefully, she could be fast enough to evade it while it rammed itself into the hard metal elevator. _It'd serve that elevator right_ , she considered. Vaguely, she wished she were wearing something red to complete the comparison.

As irony would have it, it was not red but green that emerged. Whatever shape it took she couldn't make out. She watched as the flash of bright emerald shot out from behind the corner and charged at her. The Big Blob of Green was coming at her fast.

And then…it stopped.

It huffed.

Darcy stood stock still, wound tight as a violin string. Why wasn't it charging?

The beeping of an override code being accepted rang out behind the Blob and it shifted again as if startled. Darcy heard a door slide open, indicating it was an entrance to an adjacent hall. Then, a voice beyond the corner started calling out, singing a soothing song in a language Darcy didn't speak. The Blob shifted. The voice was male, a gentle tenor, and it took a moment before it registered for Darcy that the voice was _very_ familiar. Her face softened as she watched the Blob return to the corner and follow the music.

It was a good twenty minutes later that Jarvis, suddenly back online, found Darcy frozen in place in the hallway outside the elevator.

"Darcy. Is everything alright?" Darcy blinked. _Am I **alright**? Where have you **been** , man? Oh, wait…_

"Jarvis…," she breathed, coming back to herself. She looked up and smiled—grinned, actually. "Hey! I was scared something had happened to you!"

"I apologize. There appears to have been some sort of…malfunction. I'm back on line and so is the elevator." Darcy glanced behind her as the doors opened. Dazed, she stepped inside.

"So, you weren't watching…you weren't around the past few hours, or what?"

"No, I'm afraid not. Did I miss anything of importance, Darcy?" The way the A.I. drawled the question made Darcy smile. He was a sarcastic one. She considered telling him what she'd just been through, but she wasn't really in the mood to be "debriefed." She shrugged. If anyone asked, she'd explain it. But if her best guess was right—that she'd nearly just gone mano-a-mano with the friggin' Hulk—then she figured it was a hazard of living in the Tower. She just hoped they wouldn't let him on her floor again the next time they let the big guy out of his super-sized play pen. Darcy drew a blank. _Wait. Where the hell would they even **put** a room big enough in the Tower for a dude his size?_

"…Miss Lewis?"

"Huh?" she jumped a bit. The doors to the elevator were still open. How many times had Jarvis called her name before he'd resorted to her old title?

"Which floor?" he asked slowly, as if repeating himself. It was still around 3 in the morning and she had no excuse for why she wanted to get into the elevators to begin with.

"Uh…," she finally gave up. "I…couldn't sleep. So, let's just do some exploring. Surprise me, buddy."

**9:23AM (Six Hours Later)**

Darcy watched Tony from her seat. Jane would be coming back tomorrow so, at least for today she could afford to pretend to do the work Jane had assigned while secretly using the time to study the other scientist.

Visually, he looked generally the same as always. But Darcy started to realize that he always looked _very_ tired, especially the days after A Disturbance. Did it always end the way it did last night?

Darcy wondered what it'd take to get Tony to sing for her. _He has a nice voice,_ she thought. _I hope he sings for Pepper. If I were her, I'd demand it every night before bed. It'd conk me right out—I mean, if I hadn't just been running for my life. Extenuating circumstances and all that._

She munched on some organic sweet potato chips she'd found in the community kitchen. She'd found a lot in the community kitchen last night, including a Russian assassin and gruff archer. They turned out to be pretty chill and the three of them had spent the rest of the wee hours talking about global politics and Power Rangers. Not in conjunction, of course. _Although, the global politics involved in Power Rangers would be sort of interesting. I mean, they're tasked to protect Earth but they're all American. What, the only "teenagers with attitude" live in the U.S.? That feels ethnocentric…,_ she nodded to herself and popped another chip in her mouth.

"What are you nodding about?"

Darcy turned to Tony as he came down the steps, "Just agreeing with myself."

"You should nip that in the bud," he replied, leaning in to steal one of her chips.

"Hey!" her mouth was open in plain offense.

"Are you pissed I told you to stop agreeing with yourself or because I stole your food?"

"Because you stole my food, man. That breaks all the rules of friendship. You've never asked permission."

Tony tilted his head at her as a dog might and seemed to mull something over. She hoped to God he'd just accept the friendship comment. Thankfully, he asked: "Is this something I have to ask for every time, or…?"

"No, no," she shook her head vehemently, black hair sliding over her shoulders. "One-time agreement. It's contractual. If I agree once, you are always allowed to nab food off my plate, whether figuratively or literally. In this case," she gestured to the chips, "my plate is a bag and I did not provide the initial agreement."

"Can agreement be revoked?"

"At any time, yes. And if I agree to it you agree to the converse—i.e., if you accept my offer to eat from my plate, I then have the right to eat from yours."

Tony nodded slowly. "I hope your philosophy on this is unique to food."

She grinned. "It is. So, if I agree to handle hazardous materials today, it does _not_ mean I will handle them tomorrow, as well!"

"Glad that's cleared up," he intoned. "Can I have more chips now?"

Darcy pretended to think hard. Finally, she acquiesced and held out the bag. Tony grinned and Darcy was comforted to see some lines of stress and exhaustion bleed out of his face. _Poor guy._

"So, I heard some weird noises last night. Loud banging." She'd said it as casually as possible, but her hand under the table tugged on her sweater sleeve in mild anxiety. Call it overcautious, but the last few times she'd been witness to government secrets it hadn't gone well for her. For instance, she now had to lie to her parents about her job and where she lived and who she knew. She'd also been moved across the globe multiple times against her own volition. Big Government Secrets = Bad for Darcy.

To her relief, Tony shrugged. "Jarvis told me. Sorry it woke you." Darcy stared a moment as he nibbled on her chips. He seriously didn't know. The building was blind without Jarvis. The weight of that sunk into her stomach and sent chills down her spine.

"Uh…you fixed Jarv, right? You know, for security purposes?"

Tony glanced up, his tired chocolate eyes seeming even darker and heavier-lidded with fatigue. "I found the glitch. We're all good." Something about the way he said "glitch" didn't comfort Darcy at all; it sounded like a lie. It reminded her of the bullshit Jarvis fed her about "activity" during her first few days at Stark Tower. He's neglected to mention that the "activity" was very big and very green. She wondered with a nagging dread what Tony was neglecting to mention about this so-called "glitch."


	4. The Innocent Bystander

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> In which Darcy meets the Hulk, for realsies.

**Week 5**

Darcy rocked back and forth on the heels of her boots as the elevator made its way up. This had become routine. She'd get out of bed, take a ten-minute shower, dress, jump in the elevator, and…

"Lewis! Hey, I made pancakes," Clint greeted her as she stepped out into the kitchen. He was wearing an apron that had a cartoon of a chef on it. While Darcy knew on an intellectual level that this man could kill, had killed, and would not hesitate to kill again in the proper circumstances, on an emotional level within the past several weeks she'd learned to associate him only with the same jovial vivaciousness her own uncle had emanated throughout her childhood when he'd come over on the weekends and teach her how to bake muffins. Clint, in Darcy's mind, would always be the Pancake Guy in the Goofy Apron, archery abilities be damned.

"Hey, man! Tell me they've got blueberries."

"They've got blueberries," Natasha replied curtly from her place at the edge of the bar, eyes never leaving the newspaper. She sipped from her black coffee. Darcy had quickly learned not to take offense at Natasha's demeanor; she was abrupt and stoic but if she'd truly disliked Darcy, then Darcy figured she'd probably already be dead.

"Sick boots, Lewis," Clint said as he dropped a plate at her designated place. Darcy grinned. They had spike studs on the toes and she really did appreciate that Clint noticed details like that. In her mind, that was the coolest thing about assassins; they were observant, even about her fashion choices.

"I could get some made for you with poison on the tips. They'd be useful in a fight," Natasha added in a conversational tone.

"Or, hey, we could get her some with a hidden blade in the front," Clint chirped back, stirring up the last of the batter.

"The only thing I'd be missing is that bowler hat from _Goldfinger_ that cuts off heads," Darcy quipped brightly. Clint and Natasha both shrugged; they'd only been half-joking.

It was almost okay that she now lied to her family regularly and slept in the same building as a giant green monster. This had become the thing that brought Darcy from the edge of depression: this kitchen, with its smell of pancakes and bacon and coffee, and the two assassins in pajamas with their irreverent sense of humor and penchant for absurd conversation.

What Darcy wasn't familiar with was the fourth cup of coffee on the bar. "Is there somebody else here?" she jutted her head out at the cup as she mixed half-and-half into her own Miss Piggy mug.

Natasha glanced up briefly. "Steve. He just got back from a mission."

"…Steve?" Darcy tried not to get too excited. "Steve as in…Rogers?" Clint and Natasha shared a look—Clint was smirking, but Natasha's expression spoke of some exasperation.

" _Yes_ , Steve Rogers."

"Captain America, the one and only," Clint grinned, finally taking his seat on a stool next to Darcy.

"What's he like?"

"Ask him yourself," Natasha said mildly as a harried and groggy figure stumbled into the room from the elevator. The all-American jaw was as chiseled in real life as it had looked to Darcy in news reels from the 40's.

"Ask me what, ma'am?" His voice was gravelly with the remnants of sleep.

 _Ma'am,_ Darcy thought gleefully. _He actually says '_ ** _ma'am_** Steve made a beeline for his coffee but stopped short as he caught Darcy's unfamiliar Cheshire grin.

"Hello there," he blinked. His eyes scanned over what he could see of her from the opposite side of the bar—a woman in black glasses with black hair and green eyes, wearing a blazer, inexplicably, over a Nirvana shirt.

"Hi!" was Darcy's intelligent response.

She knew she probably looked like an idiot, staring at him in idolization, but he was _Captain Freaking America in the flesh_.

"I'm Steve. It's a pleasure," he smiled genially, holding out his hand.

Darcy took it, grin never leaving her face. As an afterthought, she finally said, "Darcy. That's uh…my name." Steve smiled again and gingerly took his hand back (Darcy realized she'd forgotten to let go.)

The silence stretched on a minute as Steve didn't sit and Darcy said nothing else. "Well," Clint drawled out, clearly amused at the awkwardness. Natasha snorted and went back to reading the paper.

"Why is it that I never saw any of you guys during my first few weeks here?" Darcy said after a moment. "I mean, I didn't even know Capt— _Steve,_ " she corrected herself quickly, "lived in this building."

Natasha smiled at this, but still didn't look up from her paper. "It's probably because we all sleep on the sixty-ninth floor."

Darcy balked. "No."

"Yes," Clint smiled back, mouthful of pancake.

"So, Tony not only made a phallic building, but he put all the superheroes on the _sixty-ninth floor?_ " Darcy clarified.

Clint nodded, chuckling. Steve, on the other hand, looked profoundly uncomfortable.

"We tried explaining the joke to Steve…," Natasha started to say, but Steve interrupted, his face turning red.

"And I still don't get it," he insisted. This only made Clint laugh more.

The morning proceeded more or less normally after that, with everyone eating in relative silence. After all, none of them were exactly morning people, barring Natasha (she seemed to be perfectly awake and aware regardless of the time of day or how much sleep she'd gotten the night before.)

Suddenly, the woman in question made a huffing sound, her eyes narrowing at the newspaper in her hands. Darcy noticed her jaw tighten. "TV," Natasha ordered.

Clint took the initiative and grabbed the remote. "News?" She gave a curt nod in the affirmative.

The kitchen adjoined a large living room. The television was set up perpendicular to a massive window overlooking a breathtaking view of the city, miles of New York architecture. As the TV powered up, Natasha left her seat, coffee, and paper and made her way into the living area. She stood behind one of the three couches, her shoulders squared. Clint and Steve both made to join her. Hesitating, Darcy glanced into the room then back at her pancakes longingly. Shrugging resignedly, she slowly rose from her seat and followed.

As they all stood, the voice of a female news journalist gave a report on recent comments made by a candidate for Prime Minister in France. They had come in halfway through her report, so Darcy didn't catch the context—that is, until the channel played a clip of a well-dressed woman giving remarks at a rally. Her eyes were narrow, her nose pointed, her eyebrows plucked into thin lines, and her brown hair slicked back into a tight bun at the base of her neck.

"So-called superheroes," the translation dubbed over her voice, "are the real danger to the civilized world. Whether they are powered or trained, they are unnatural. They are the new nuclear bombs—if nuclear bombs had their own agendas, desires, and ulterior motives. Governments who use such volatile agents cannot be trusted because they cannot possibly control these creatures. When I am elected, I promise passage of a resolution in the United Nations to ban the use of superhuman forces!"

The TV went black. Darcy saw that Clint was clutching the remote. Natasha stood preternaturally still.

" _Creatures?"_ she spoke with chilling clarity in the echoing silence of the room. Darcy watched the back of her red head, not daring to move.

"Unnatural," Clint added, still gripping the remote with white knuckles.

Steve sighed and padded, barefoot, back to the kitchen. He shook his head, but said nothing.

Eventually, they all found their way back to their seats, eating in tense silence.

At long last, Darcy couldn't hold it in anymore. "I'd like to see _her_ save New York City," she griped into her Miss Piggy mug. To her right, she was proud to see Natasha slightly relax and almost smile.

**8:54AM**

Darcy was glad she'd negotiated for a later work time in the lab because she much preferred having breakfast with her assassins (when she'd begun to think of them as "hers," she couldn't say, but she absolutely thought of them with a possessive joy.) The only downside was that she was shit at time management. She was practically running down the white halls, her arms packed with the notes she'd taken last night ("homework" Tony had called it, but it was really just another transcription of the Mystery Scientist's newest stack of chicken-scrawled notes.)

As she approached the huge glass doors of the lab, she recognized the black-clad figure of Director Nick Fury—with whom she'd counted herself lucky enough to have only met once prior—engaged in what was clearly an argument with Tony Stark.

Darcy slowed her steps, catching her breath. From Tony's face and posture, she could guess this was not the sort of conversation she wanted to walk in on. She knew that face; it was his cutting-remark face. And the way he was standing looked like her stepbrother when he was considering throwing a punch at someone who had called their mother something nasty. Director Fury was facing away from the door, so she could draw no conclusions about his state of mind. His shoulders were perpetually tense beneath the black leather, so his posture told her nothing. They made an interesting picture—Tony, in a barefoot fighter's stance in his white t-shirt and jeans versus Fury, unflinching in black leather.

After what looked to be a particularly fuck-you comment from Tony, Darcy saw Fury's head incline and he made to move on his heel. Panicking, she power-walked to the other side of the hall and turned her back toward the glass. She pretended to go over some of her notes, doing to best to look as if she _hadn't_ just been peering in on their argument. In doing so, she unwittingly allowed herself to be rammed in the back by the opening door—why Fury had used _that exit_ instead of the automatic sliding door further down the hall was beyond her. She tumbled forward, shocked, papers flying from her hands and her glasses clattering to the floor. _Bastard probably knew I was eaves-watching and wanted to teach me a lesson._ She cursed and got to her knees, reaching out to gather all the notes she'd written the night before. But as she squinted all around the floor, she realized she couldn't see her glasses anywhere. "Shit."

"Interesting choice in eyewear." Darcy slowly raised her eyes to the dark figure looming over her, holding her glasses in his hand. The owner of the deep voice made no gesture to indicate he had plans to return them to her. Darcy was surprised he'd stuck around; she thought he must have already made his way down the hall in his Dr. No get-up after he'd hit her with the door. With a flare of annoyance, she found herself responding with more snark than perhaps was smart to use with one's boss's boss.

"I kind of need them," she bit back, climbing to her feet. "You know…to see? What, did you think everyone who works here just magically has 20/20 vision?" She paused abruptly at his raised eyebrow…over his unseeing eye. Her own eyes widened when it dawned on her. _Backpedal like the Dickens, man. Stat._ "I…just realized how insensitive that sounded. You know, to say…to you…since…you know." She was floundering. She'd just made a sarcastic comment about eyesight to a dude who only had one working eye. Darcy watched him closely as she swallowed, fearing the worst. Instead, the corner of his mouth twitched as if he struggled to hold back a smirk and he let the eyebrow drop.

"I was referring, Miss Lewis, to the color of the frames."

This only served to further confuse her. The glasses were black on the outside with grape inner trimming. "Uh…I like purple?" He hummed and handed the glasses back to her. She'd squinted through their entire conversation, but even with her best attempts to focus her eyesight she couldn't sort out the expression on Fury's face. Putting the glasses on didn't help in that regard. Even as she watched him walk away, black leather duster fanning out in the wake of his stride, she still couldn't properly categorize that look in his eyes. If she didn't know any better, she'd call it _kindness_. And it was fucking _unsettling_.

Trying to shrug off the feeling that Fury had just analyzed her very soul, Darcy stepped into the lab. Tony was bent over the table on the upper portion of the room, the muscles in his arms working out the tension of their own accord. He was breathing heavily.

"…Need some space?" she asked gently. He glanced over his shoulder.

"It's not that I need space. You're a sight for sore eyes, Darce," he heaved a sigh, "but I have some things I've got to work on alone today."

"With the chamber?" she asked, walking to the other side of the table to set the papers down in order to give him more breathing room. He nodded.

"Yeah, with the chamber. It…has a weakness in the system. Fury," he said the name with spite, "brought it to my attention after Jarvis glitched the other day."

"What kind of weakness?" Darcy didn't entirely know what she was asking since she didn't even know what the chamber was supposed to _do_ , but if it was bothering Tony, she wanted to give him a compassionate ear. _Well, that and I'm a busy-body_ , she admitted to herself.

Tony straightened up and ran his fingers through his already-messy hair, gesturing vaguely at the holographic blueprints on the table. "It looks like if we lose power it could disable the chamber's cooling system and the all-important goo could overheat."

"And if that happens…?"

"If that happens, the building is, well..."

"Toast?" Darcy supplied.

"Yeah."

Darcy gnawed at her bottom lip.

A moment later, they both heard the glass door slide open. Jane strolled in, her face in a manual of some kind, chewing on her thumbnail and muttering something about wormholes. Darcy gave Tony her most supportive, understanding smile. He grimly smiled back, then gave her a wink that said, _Go on, go help your lunatic boss._

Darcy spent the rest of her day with Jane talking about how to build a new bridge between realms. Thor had only come to Earth at the cost of some Asgardian resource that was in short supply and had since been incapable of staying. Jane loved the man to death and wanted to be able to see him again. Moreover, it was in everyone's best interest to, in Darcy's own words, "make inter-realm travel a thing again," just in case Earth needed Asgardian aid in another Loki-like situation. Jane had some new ideas, but it would require some major changes to her current designs.

All the while they worked and discussed, Tony labored away in the upper level, his attention never leaving the blueprints.

**Friday, 12:43PM**

Later that week, Tony announced to Darcy that the fix for the weakness was almost complete. He said all that was left was to find a way to get the cylinders cool "beyond freeing them in the event of an emergency."

"Maybe you could get them to self-eject."

"Great idea," Tony scoffed, "We'll get them to eject from the walls inside the chamber so they can crack open and kill everyone. Problem solved."

Darcy snorted and went back to the blueprints. "Sarcastic bastard," she muttered.

A buzzing sound came from behind her, followed by a mild curse. Darcy looked up from the holographs; on the level below, Jane was nursing a small wound on her thumb.

"Did the equipment fight back again?" she called down.

"It's stubborn," Jane replied, pouting.

Tony coughed. "That woman is allergic to electricity," he said under his breath, eyebrows raised at Darcy.

"Oh contraire," she grinned, standing, "electricity loves her. It keeps coming back for more."

"Obviously," he smiled crookedly.

Darcy made her way down the steps, asking each scientist if they were up for coffee. Over the past week, she'd created another routine: Starbucks runs.

Fifteen minutes later, she was walking back into Stark Tower bearing a tray of coffee cups. As soon as she entered the building, however, she realized that something was very, _very_ wrong.

In fact, as she turned back to glance out the glass doors, she realized that none of the guards usually present were in their places. She'd been able to get into the front doors without anyone giving her a sideways glance. She turned back to the lobby where she stood.

"Uh…Jarvis? Where is everybody?"

No response.

_Holy fuck; not again._

The lights were still on, but clearly Jarvis had been disabled. Darcy sighed. At least if the lights were still on, the chamber goo was still being cooled. _Thank God for small mercies_.

She considered making her way to the stairs, but that was a hell of a long way up. She considered her options. _I could leave the building? Probably a good idea, since the guards just up and left…_ There was an obvious possibility that Darcy didn't want to consider—that the guards _hadn't_ just abandoned their posts willy-nilly and rather had been forced to defend the tower in another, more _proactive_ way. Darcy told herself there was no reason to panic. Except she was panicking. She didn't want to leave the tower until she knew Jane was safe…

It was at that moment she heard footsteps down the hall on the right. The lobby was huge and it echoed every little sound—even the sound of people creeping. Whoever was walking didn't want to be heard at all. Darcy's heartbeat began to pound. She had no where to hide. And even if there was someplace for her to crawl into, they'd hear her heavy footfalls.

_Maybe they're just SHIELD agents._

No such luck. Around the bend came two men dressed in black wielding large guns. Darcy was frozen in place. One of the shooters aimed at her—and _smiled_.

 _Fuck this._ Darcy dropped the tray of coffee, the hot liquid spraying across the marble floor, and took off running for the opposite wall. At least there she might have a chance of getting to the stairwell without getting riddled with bullets.

She heard laughter behind her from both men. Somehow, their laughter sounded foreign—like it was accented. _What are they laughing at? The woman running for her life?_

Darcy got the joke when she reached the stairwell. They'd let her make it there just so they could see her response when the door _didn't open_. Just like the doors in the hallway when she'd been running from the Hulk, this door wouldn't open without Jarvis's say-so. And Jarvis wasn't online. So she was screwed.

Darcy slowly turned to face her to-be killers. They grinned back at her, dark figures with guns that seemed relatively small in the large expanse of a bright room with a vaulted ceiling. Of all the emotions to be feeling in the moment before death, the ones that gripped Darcy seemed rather inappropriate. _This would make a good photograph._ And: _That mercenary would actually be kind of cute if he weren't a cold-blooded killer._ And, finally: _I'm going to come back as a ghost and haunt Thor, Fury, and Stark—_ ** _in that order_** _—for the shit they pulled me and Jane into._

Her next thought, as the "cute" mercenary raised his gun to end her life, was one of confusion.

Those thuds were familiar.

Both men adopted identical expressions of bewilderment. Something large was coming down the same hall they'd just sneaked through. And it sounded like it was picking up speed.

They turned away from their trapped prey to face the new, unknown threat. Darcy grinned at their backs. They had no idea…

Around the bend came something—some _one_ —that she'd only seen once before as a huge smear of green, but was now clearly defined as an oversized man…or something like it. The two mercenaries started to breathe heavily, frantic. In a language Darcy didn't recognize, the ugly one gave the cute one an order, and both men released a barrage of gunfire. Darcy didn't know why, but she screamed.

"NO! Don't you dare fucking hurt him!" She started to run forward—to do what, she didn't know yet—but stopped short when she saw that the bullets were effortlessly _bouncing off_ the Hulk's skin. Several of the deflected bullets came close to her and she jumped back to avoid becoming collateral damage. One light blew out on the ceiling. One of the shooters got hit in the leg and cursed violently in the same foreign language as before. The other shooter ran out of bullets. He started to run for the exit, but the Hulk immediately intercepted him in one short strike and thrashed him against the wall. He hit the floor and didn't move.

Darcy stared, wide-eyed, as the second shooter began to limp in the opposite direction, ditching his gun on the floor. As the Hulk took another, slower step toward him, the man began to speak rapidly—probably begging. Darcy didn't look as he, too, was flung against the wall furthest from her.

When she opened her eyes, the Hulk was staring at her. She backed up even further against the door that wouldn't open, trying the doorknob with her hand. _No such luck_.

It took three strides forward, coming up to her. Closer now, she saw he was frothing at the mouth. His skin was dirty, his hair wild. He breathed in great gasps, as if he were in a constant state of losing control.

His shadow spilled over her; they were nearly toe-to-toe. She had to bend her head all the way back to look into his eyes. And then…there.

His eyes were green, obviously. And many times the size of her own. But, they were also… Darcy couldn't find a name for it. Suddenly, the fear melted. She wasn't gripping at the doorknob anymore. She was tilting her head to the side, trying to get a better look at the giant green man standing over her. She didn't even question that he had yet to kill her; she was too engrossed in that look in his eyes. He seemed so... _Tortured. That's the word. The poor guy looks_ ** _tortured._**

Mindlessly, she reached out for his face, even knowing that she'd have to be Mr. Fantastic to reach up that high. But the movement seemed to startle him; he suddenly jerked back, grunting. Rather than be jolted into reason, Darcy found the action aggravating and followed him. For every half-step he took, she took four of her own. His facial expression spoke volumes; she confused him, maybe even scared him, and he couldn't figure out why the hell _she_ wasn't afraid of _him_. He kept grunting and jerking away as if he didn't want to be touched. And she kept pressing forward, her hand stretched out to him.

Somehow—Darcy was so entranced she wasn't thinking much about the bizarre nature of the entire situation—he was shrinking in size. It was slow at first, but eventually Darcy absentmindedly took it in stride (literally) and used the opportunity to grab at his wrist. He tried in vain to pull away, gently it seemed, and broke eye contact. She huffed, her hand barely being able to hold onto his large wrist, even as he was shrinking; he didn't want to lose her touch but he wanted to tell himself he was putting up a fight.

"Oh, stop running away!" she found herself scolding him, "You know, you're acting like a coward, you big green thug!" He didn't respond. The grunting had stopped altogether.

It seemed he'd finally reached human-size—still several inches taller than her. The green began to fade from his complexion. He ended up as a nude man (what was left of some over-stretched shorts fell limply to his feet) with dirt smeared across his pale skin, a thick line of chest hair, and curls tangled in a mop against his forehead. He swayed on his feet.

Darcy saw the tell-tale signs of impending unconsciousness, and she reached her arms out. This time he couldn't pull away. He collapsed almost immediately, eyes rolling into the back of his head.

His weight was more than Darcy could really hold. They both sank to the floor, his head lolling against her shoulder. He smelled of sweat and, oddly, ink.

Darcy considered her options. There could be more shooter dudes in the building.

"Miss Lewis? Are you…?" Jarvis's voice was a welcome one.

Calmly, Darcy smiled. "Hey, Jarv. Uh, I'm okay, but do you know where this guy's room is?"

"Indeed. It is several floors above your own."

"Groovy. Do you think if I can get him to the elevators, you could send us on up?"

In response, the Jarvis opened the elevator doors. Darcy smiled by way of thanks and began the laborious process of dragging the naked man to the elevator. _This was a bad day to wear a dress and heels_ , she thought. She stopped briefly to remove the shoes, then took hold of his torso to yet again haul his dead weight toward the opening.

Once inside the lift, Jarvis sent them up. Darcy watched as the numbers went higher and higher until they reached 70. He lived, it seemed, in the floor above the other Avengers.

The doors opened.

"All clear, right Jarv?"

"The floor is safe, Darcy." He was back to calling her Darcy. She supposed that was a good sign.

She stood and dragged the mystery man carefully from the elevator to the only door she could see on the entire floor other than the stairwell opening at the far end of the hall.

"This must be it," she muttered to the unconscious man in her arms. She heard Jarvis unlock the door for her.

She reached out for the knob and pushed it open; the door was heavier than it looked. As she stepped in, she saw how thick the walls were from the side and wondered what it was reinforced with. She shrugged. _Must be his place._

It was sparsely decorated. Sparsely as in _not_ decorated. The walls were high and white. The window was large with a beautiful view of the city. The only furniture in the front living room was a single, brown couch in the center. A plain brown rug lay in front of it on top of the white carpeting.

She dragged him in, but as she glanced at the couch, she couldn't find it in her to lift him again, so she instead rested his body against it.

Darcy stood, preparing to leave, when the throw blanket that sat on one seat caught her attention. She eyed it for a moment, considering. Finally making up her mind, she picked it up and carefully unfolded it. She stared briefly at the Indian designs on the blanket, quietly admiring the clearly handmade workmanship. Sighing, she leaned down to drape it over his body. For whatever reason, it felt like the right thing to do.

As Darcy left the room and shut the door behind her, she heard (and felt) her cell phone ring from within her bra. The ringtone was "She Blinded Me with Science" so Darcy already knew who was calling. She tugged it out. The title "BOSS LADY" with a photo of Jane asleep at her desk back in New Mexico appeared on her screen.

"Hey."

"Darcy?" came Jane's frantic voice. "Are you okay? The building got infiltrated by something called HYDRA. All the other non-combat agents got put on lockdown but you were on a coffee run so I wasn't sure if you weren't in the building or if you got to safety in time or if you were even _ALIVE_ —"

"Hey! Hey," Darcy cooed, "It's okay. _I'm_ okay. I'll be at the lab in a minute, alright?"

She got into the elevator and the doors closed to the seventieth floor.


End file.
